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Codeman1980
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 6.5 + USB 3.0 + xHCI

Hello,

I have a SYS-E200-8D Micro Server, and wanted to use an external USB 3.0 enclosure (with an SSD disk) as an additional Datastore.

I can mount the external enclosure without any problems within ESXi as an additional Datastore, but it is only attached through USB 2.0, therefore the read/write throughput is quite small.

I have already followed the steps as described here and enabled xHCI in the BIOS: http://www.virten.net/2015/10/usb-3-0-devices-detected-as-usb-2-in-esxi-6-0-and-5-5/

But when I want to load the xHCI driver through "vmkload_mod xhci" I get the following error message:

"vmkload_mod: Can not load module xhci: Invalid or missing namespace".

Do you have any ideas which problem I'm facing here, and why the driver couldn't be loaded?

Thanks for your help,

-Klaus

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Codeman1980‌, please refer to KB 2147650 (Important information about the new ESXi 6.5 USB driver vmkusb, and the legacy USB drivers (2147650)...) for more details, but briefly with vSphere 6.5 we have a new integrated USB driver that is named "vmkusb".  You can verify that it is loaded with "vmkload_mod -l | grep -i usb".  If you see only a single line that contains "vmkusb" then you have support USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 in that single driver and there is no need to load a USB 3.0 driver such as "xhci". 

FWIW, he invalid or missing namespace error that you are getting likely refers to the fact that the old "usb" driver module, which implements the USB bus, is not loaded.  That driver is also no longer needed.

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

> ... but it is only attached through USB 2.0, ...

Codeman1980‌ how do you know this?

Please try running "lsusb -t" as well as lsusb.  Thanks.

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lancechou
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I think that's because the port routing is not enabled for the host controller.

It should be an easy fix.

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Codeman1980
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

How can I fix that port routing?

Thanks,

-Klaus

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lancechou
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What I meant was it's an easy fix for VMWARE

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lancechou
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Klaus,

  The issue is those USB ports are shared by XHCI and EHCI on your machine. You may want to check by going to the BIOS menu to see if you can dedicate those ports to XHCI as a temporarily workaround.

Thanks,

Lance

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lancechou
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Could you help get vid:pid of your xhci host controller for me?

You can run the following command: (Need to enable ESXi shell or SSH)

lspci -v | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /.*USB 3.0.*/) { getline; print $0; exit 0 } }'

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user9922
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have the same problem...seem to only have USB 2.0. Intel C236 chipset.

Device ID:

Class 0c03: 8086:a12f

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